Not Your Mascots Houska co-founded
Not Your Mascots, an organization and social media campaign that educates the public about stereotyping and representation of Native Americans, including work on getting
Washington, D.C.'s football team to change its name.
Pipeline protests Houska founded and runs the
Giniw Collective. She and others from the collective fought for seven years against construction of the
Line 3 pipeline, an oil pipeline running from
Alberta to
Wisconsin. Three of those years she spent living in a tent on the pipeline's route, including during harsh winters. The area's tribal nations maintain the treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather on land along the pipeline, which crosses many bodies of water. Tribal nations also grow wild rice there, which has cultural and historic importance. The Giniw Collective often uses their bodies to stop or slow construction as a form of protest, including crawling inside the pipeline, squatting in trees, and tying themselves to machines. Houska has also engaged politicians directly, including meetings with the Biden administration to push for the federal government to intervene and suspend the project's permit.
Land Back Houska's work includes reclamation of land for Native stewardship and cultural education. She led the effort to acquire "Bald Rock Point", a historic camp with half a mile of shoreline in her treaty territory on Rainy Lake. Bald Rock Point sits across from the "Review Islands", former home of environmentalist
Ernest Oberholtzer. Oberholtzer stored many of his papers and belongings at Bald Rock Point early in its history.
Other work Houska is involved in other climate and social justice efforts, having published essays in
All We Can Save,
Vogue,
the New York Times, and
CNN. In 2024, she published a chapter on movement lessons learned in the
Oxford Handbook on Peaceful Assembly. She is also a contributing writer for the
Indian Country Media Network. She was the campaign director for
Honor the Earth from 2016 to 2019. Houska is a former adviser to Senator
Bernie Sanders as a campaign Native American advisor. During his 2016 presidential campaign, she was the lead author of his Native policy platform. In 2021, Houska spoke at the 33rd
European Green Party Council on
climate change and
biodiversity.
Awards Houska received the 2023 Rose-Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism at
Dickinson College. The prize rewarded her work as a tribal attorney, land defender, and founder of the Giniw Collective.
Melinda Gates awarded Houska the
Good Housekeeping 2017 Awesome Women award. == Personal life ==